Voidstalker

by John Graham

  Gabriel paused in front of the apartment door, his scowl relaxing even though his anger hadn’t abated. He couldn’t be angry at a family reunion; at the very least he couldn’t look angry, not in front of Aster, and certainly not in front of his own children.

  The biometric sensor flash-scanned his eyes and the door opened for him. The maganiel android was standing guard in the hallway for some reason, with its sidearm primed and attached to the magnetic plate on its thigh. It nodded its head politely at Gabriel as he headed to the bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind him.

  Aster was already there, lying on his side of the bed. She rolled around to see who had come in, and sat up abruptly when she saw him. Then she leapt off the bed and rushed over to embrace him. Gabriel reciprocated the embrace, squeezing her tight against his chest.

  “Your bosses sent me a message saying you were back.” Aster purred with relief.

  “It’s good to be back.” Gabriel replied.

  “Gabriel, they accused me of–” Aster began to say frantically.

  “I know, I was told.” Gabriel interjected reassuringly, “it’s all been taken care of.”

  “What, so you know I was caught up in some kind of sting operation?” Aster asked.

  “Yes, the DNI told me everything,” Gabriel said, then he added, “including about the trap into which you walked.”

  The warm reunion suddenly became cooler.

  “Excuse me?” Aster said with a marginally harder tone.

  “You’re a brilliant engineer, but an absolutely terrible spy.” Gabriel said matter-of-factly, “Not only did you get recorded snooping around a place by three separate groups, but one of them was able to find out your personal override code by surveilling you with a simple camera that he made in the lab.”

  “I know all that, thank you very much,” Aster said defensively, “so what?”

  “So,” Gabriel continued, “you opened yourself up to being blackmailed and framed by a supposed friend and colleague, not only as the mole, but as the saboteur, and as his killer.”

  “Fuck you!” Aster snapped, Gabriel’s words having hit a nerve, “Felix was a friend; I’ve known him for years! He couldn’t have been a mole, and he would never frame me!”

  “Really?” Gabriel said with a hard glare, “how well did you know him?”

  “Well enough to have been invited over for lunch countless times.” Aster responded, “Him and his partner are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met. You would’ve been invited over too, if you were ever home!”

  “So you knew the two of them well enough to know that Kessler’s partner used to be a ship-board engineer?” Gabriel asked pointedly.

  “Of course I knew that,” Aster shot back, “he worked for twenty five years on deep-space mining voyages before retiring.”

  “And during his career, he must have been exposed to an awful lot of cosmic radiation.” Gabriel pointed out, “Treating and repairing the cellular damage caused by long term radiation poisoning must be very expensive, even with medical insurance and two salaries.”

  Aster was speechless with shock and disbelief.

  “It’s almost impossible to get an already loyal agent to infiltrate somewhere.” Gabriel continued, “It’s much easier to recruit someone who’s already on the inside, and bribery or blackmail – or a combination – are the two best ways to do it.”

  “You think he betrayed his employer…and his colleagues…to pay medical bills?” Aster asked, her voice quivering with disbelief.

  “I don’t ‘think’ that,” Gabriel answered, “I know that, because that’s what the DNI discovered during the investigation which cleared you of responsibility.”

  “And you seriously expect me to happy about that?” Aster demanded bitterly.

  “Happy about being exonerated on charges of corporate espionage, criminal complicity, xenotech possession, and first degree murder?” Gabriel shot back, his normally level tone hardening, “I would have thought so, yes.”

  “One of my best friends was murdered this morning,” Aster said, angry and hurt, “and I’ve been suspended from my job. How the fuck am I supposed to be happy?”

  Aster punctuated the last word by punching Gabriel in the arm. Of course it didn’t hurt, but Gabriel’s face twitched into an angry scowl at being hit, nonetheless.

  “Oh, you don’t like that, do you?” Aster goaded him.

  She followed up with a second punch, and in retaliation he grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the wall, baring his teeth at her in his typical, wolf-like snarl.

  “Nice to see you drop the strong-and-silent pretence.” Aster said mockingly, unafraid of him, “anger makes you a little more human than normal.”

  Gabriel had had enough of women manipulating him.

  He abruptly released Aster’s wrists and reached down, hooking his hands behind her knees and hoisting her into the air. He carried her to the bed and tossed her down onto the duvet without ceremony, pouncing on top of her like a predator. Aster pretended to struggle back, then slapped him across the face just to show that she could. Gabriel snarled angrily and Aster laughed, daring him to go further.

  He tore her clothes off like a primeval savage while trying to get out of his own uniform at the same time. Aster cut to the chase by ripping open his shirt. That rekindled his frenzied anger, and he pinned her back down to the bed and entered her.

  She yelped at his forceful entry and wrapped her legs around him in response, hooking her legs behind his thighs and holding him in place as she ensnared him with her arms. He closed one hand around her throat and choked the pillow with the other, taking his anger out on her with a vigorous rhythm while she moaned her delight that he was home.

  * * *

  Gabriel finished with a climactic snarl, and Aster responded by raking his back with her nails like a feral cat, locking her limbs around his body and denying him the power to leave. They lay together as they coasted down from their mutual high, savouring the touch of each other’s skin and the satisfaction of their reunion.

  After a while, Gabriel pulled out and rolled over. Aster rolled over with him, snuggling up against his chest and resting her chin on his shoulder. He pulled the covers over their hot and sweaty bodies, scattering the shredded remnants of their clothes across the floor.

  “Welcome home, sweetheart.” Aster murmured sweetly.

  “I’m sorry about everything.” He said, reciprocating the embrace and stroking her hair.

  “You don’t have anything to apologise for.” Aster replied.

  “Actually, it was a sympathetic sorry.” Gabriel clarified.

  “Oh, I definitely don’t want that.” Aster answered, “The past day or so has been bad enough without other people’s sympathy.”

  “Well, your day wasn’t as bad as mine.” Gabriel replied grimly.

  “My career is on life support, my colleague was murdered, and I got blamed for it.” Aster said pessimistically, “You’re telling me you can top that?”

  “You were accused of killing a colleague and then cleared of blame,” Gabriel answered stoically, “I actually had to kill a colleague.”

  Aster looked up at him in shock.

  “Did he deserve it?” she asked.

  “No, but it had to be done.” Gabriel replied, “And if our positions had been swapped, I would have expected him to do the same for me.”

  They lay together in silence for a while.

  “Why does anger make me Human?” Gabriel asked Aster.

  “You’re so emotionally repressed all the time.” Aster explained, “It’s hard to know what you’re thinking. At least when you get angry you show your feelings.”

  “I don’t mean to be,” Gabriel answered, “it’s just that…”

  “I’m guessing the DNI did something to you to make you as strong and silent as possible,” Aster said, resignedly, “and that what exactly they did is classified.”

  “It keeps me focussed on the mission at hand,” Gabriel replied.<
br />
  “I’m sure it does.” Aster said sceptically, “And I’m sure it’s not just a way for the DNI to make sure that its tool don’t answer back.”

  Gabriel was silent for a moment.

  “There was a point when I thought I might die.” Gabriel said eventually, “and I would have been ready to die to make sure you and the children could be safe.”

  “What made you want to live?”

  “Wanting to come back and see you all again,” Gabriel replied, “and to spare you the burden of having to explain to the children why daddy wasn’t coming home.”

  “Very considerate of you.” Aster answered wryly, “Although, if anything did happen, we’d have to stop at baby number 5.”

  Gabriel flinched.

  “Relax.” Aster flicked him playfully under the chin, “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Good.” Gabriel replied simply.

  “Why ‘good’?” Aster asked, suspiciously, “You don’t want a fifth one?”

  “I’m lukewarm about having another one.” Gabriel answered, “Four seems enough.”

  Aster snuggled closer into his embrace.

  “In that case, we’ll need to find another outlet for all that aggression.”

  * * *

  The Spire never slept. Tens of thousands of analysts, technicians, operatives, and agents worked in rotating shifts around the clock. It was, after all, the centre of all military intelligence operations in the entire sector, coordinating the activities of dozens of DNI stations and sub-stations, each of which, in turn, coordinated numerous smaller operations at the fringes of Human-controlled space and beyond.

  And the aftermath of one such operation needed a lot of explaining.

  “I have never believed you to be someone who takes unnecessary risks.” Said one of the speakers in the holographic teleconference, his face concealed and his voice electronically altered, “so to say that I believe this technical intelligence operation you were running in the heart of a major star system is ‘out-of-character’ would be a gross understatement.”

  “If you read my report, as I assume you have, you will know that the operation was ultimately a success.” Red-eye replied, unfazed by the criticism, “Which, by definition, means that it was not an ‘unnecessary’ risk.”

  “Indeed,” said a second digitally altered voice, “and now, apparently, this ‘observer’ wants to trade its knowledge in exchange for a stay of execution.”

  “You would rather I destroy it?”

  “Far be it from me to presume to tell you how to run operations in your sector,” the second voice replied loftily, “but if I discovered an active alien AI in the home system of my sector, I would have ordered its destruction sooner rather than later.”

  “If this ‘Swarm’ is as malevolent as the reports indicate, I suspect we will need all the resources we can muster.” Red-eye replied, “Even including the support of an alien AI.”

  “On a separate note, the performance of your voidstalkers continues to impress,” said a third voice, “even though one of them apparently threatened you.”

  “I should hope so, considering that the Masterminds themselves commissioned the programme,” Red-eye responded, “and as to your second point, he did not threaten me.”

  “His anger would indicate emotional instability,” a fourth voice noted airily, “an undesirable trait in a field operative at any level.”

  “He is anything but unstable,” Red-eye answered calmly, “and in any case, if the voidstalkers were meant to be that docile, they would be an army of robots. They are not.”

  “Robots lack the capacity to second-guess their superiors.” The first voice remarked.

  “They also lack something much more crucial.” Red-eye replied.

  “Which is?”

  “The spark of Humanity.” Red-eye explained, “The voidstalker programme has long-term purposes which transcend its immediate utility as a tool of deep-space intelligence operations. They hinge on the long-term survival of Humanity as a whole, and it is therefore vital that the voidstalkers actually be Human, anger and all.”

  “How very cryptic.” Remarked the first voice, “And uncharacteristically poetic.”

  “No doubt you will all be ordered to initiate satellite programmes modelled on my own when the time is right.” Red-eye responded.

  “I would not be surprised by that.” Said a fifth voice, “Projects of this sort are routinely allocated to each of us individually, and the reasons are entrusted to that person exclusively until the time is right to divulge the full explanation to the rest of us.”

  “In that case, fellow directors-general, does that conclude our call?” Red-eye asked.

  “I believe it does. Farewell until the next Terran year.”

  The various callers terminated their secure, trans-stellar comm. links, ending the conference call and leaving Red-eye alone on her throne.

  She turned back to a set of four medical reports on her desk, scrolling through the reports and absorbing the positive results with silent approval. When she scrolled back up and saw the grinning faces with their father’s emerald green eyes, she couldn’t help but smile.

  THE END

  About the Author

  John Graham (which may or may not be his real name) enjoys writing as a hobby, and science fiction as an escape. The result of combining the two is this book.